Blockchain Daily News

Edition 147, 12.02.2018

Fans’ Section

Russian authorities have arrested engineers at one of the country’s top-secret nuclear warhead facilities after they allegedly tried to mine bitcoin on its computers. Several employees have been detained at the Federal Nuclear Centre in Sarov, western Russia, after making “an attempt to use the work computing facilities for personal ends, including for so-called mining”, a spokesperson said.

FAO: Using the supercomputer of a nuke facility to mine bitcoin…that wasn’t very clever for some scientists, now was it? Guys, you watch too much “The Big Bang Theory”…

DNT: Mining became quite a phenomenon. It’s like the gold rush…And imagination is unlimited.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies solve the problem of making payments in an environment where trust is broken — but it’s unclear whether that’s a dilemma that needs to be solved, Federal Reserve of New York economists wrote in a blog post.

Deals & Investments

Bankera aims to become the bank for the blockchain era and is already making splashes in the ICO world. To date, their ICO has collected over 100 million euros from over 80,000 contributors making Bankera’s ICO the biggest in regard to the number of contributors.

PRNewswireThe Gibraltar Blockchain Exchange has announced the completion of its token sale, which saw the issuance of their Rock Token. Originally set to run until February 14, 2018 the GBX token sale began on 7 February at 12:00:00 and, having successfully reached its hard cap of US $27 million, concluded at 12:00 on 8 February.

Overnight, a Castle Rock biotech company’s makeover into Riot Blockchain rocketed it out of oblivion and into the realm of opportunistic investors. But sales of thousands of shares by the CEO John O’Rourke and a key investor have raised red flags among skeptics.

Cryptocurrencies

Italian cryptocurrency exchange BitGrail has announced the theft of nearly $200 million from its servers. However, some investors and developers are skeptical.

“We extend our sincerest apologies to our customers and to all those involved in the illegal transfer of Nano on our platform,” BitGrail wrote.

FAO: Hmm, I don’t think their “sincerest apologies” will help their customers too much these days. And I don’t think this ends this way. No wonder regulation is being pushed all over the world – to avoid situations like the one above, and the one below…

Japan said it had raided a number of cryptocurrency exchanges following a massive hack that saw thieves steal US$530 million in virtual currency. The hack of Coincheck was one of the largest of its kind, and prompted authorities to search the firm’s offices last week, after slapping it with an administrative order.

After the Mt. Gox cryptocurrency exchange was stung by a half-billion dollar theft in 2014, Japanese regulators swung into action.Their goal was to craft rules that both protected traders and allowed a promising sector to flourish. By last April, they thought they had arrived at a set of guidelines that did just that.

Exchanges & Trading Venues

Local US regulators of the state of New Jersey announced they had sent a cease and desist order to cryptocurrency investment platform Bitstrade Feb. 9, describing the business as “fraudulent.” A press release accompanying the “emergency order” warns that Bitstrade was not licensed to offer securities in the state of New Jersey, and that it was “violating the law” by not disclosing key information about its operations.

An Austrian cryptocurrency platform raised its trading limits and is opening a London office, pushing to broaden the market for high-rollers even as monetary policy makers across Europe demand tighter regulation.

Vendors

Thousands of websites, including ones run by U.S. and UK government agencies, were infected for several hours with code that causes web browsers to secretly mine digital currencies, technology news site The Register reported.

DNT: If even the government’s websites are vulnerable to this…then there’s no reason to add any more comment.

Iceland is expected to use more energy “mining” bitcoins and other virtual currencies this year than it uses to power its homes.With massive amounts of electricity needed to run the computers that create bitcoins, large virtual currency companies have established a base in the North Atlantic island nation blessed with an abundance of renewable energy.

BitPeople

Forbes magazine released its first-ever list of the richest people in cryptocurrency, similar to its Forbes 400 annual list. The values are estimates based on the price of cryptocurrencies as of January 19. In his letter explainingwhy the magazine created the list, Forbes’ editor, Randall Lane, said such transparency could help the crypto industry move out of its shadowy beginnings to financial maturity.

FAO: Did you find your name in that list? Then why don’t you sponsor us too…

Eighteen year-old Eddy Zillan appears to be a genuine cryptohero of our time, after investing his entire savings into cryptocurrencies when he was just 15 years old. And, remarkably, he has made a whopping $1 million in profit since then. Eager to repeat the venture? Ask him how to do it, since he now provides professional consultations.

While the price of Bitcoin has dropped since Christmas, the virtual currency boom has shown no signs of cooling off in the more august precincts of America’s elite universities. Several top schools have added or are rushing to add classes about Bitcoin and the record-keeping technology that it introduced.

Latest Developments & Agreements

CME may be looking at ways for developers to modify a blockchain’s rules without requiring consensus from all of the network’s nodes, new patent filings show.It’s a key need for such systems, such as those that form part of airline reward points programs and other applications in which a blockchain is used to store and maintain information in real time, the application’s

The regulator of Abu Dhabi’s international financial centre said it could create rules for exchanges handling virtual currencies, in a sign that authorities in the United Arab Emirates may allow trade in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin to develop.

Events

FAO: I am one of the speakers at the event, you can check the entire list of speakers here. Please note that I am building up my agenda for 2018 – if you want me as a speaker at your events better get in touch before my year gets uber busy – contact me here.

Analysis

US Stock Exchanges ended on Friday one of the worst weeks since the financial crisis, despite the fact that Wall Street recovered in the last day of the week.

FAO: We have been asked by “Bursa”, the leader of financial media in Romania, to state our mind about last week’s stock market roller coaster in the US. Article in Romanian but you can use Google Translate. Better read it if you ask yourself what’s the possible relation to Blockchain Daily News…

A volatile area of the market may have been a harbinger of the stock market’s worst week in two years.Fundstrat Global Advisors’ Tom Lee acknowledges bitcoin’s crash two months ago could be seen as a signal stocks would plunge next.

A new venture aims to use blockchain technology to modernize the management and investments of Islamic charitable endowments, called waqf, that would tap into a vast but underutilized pool of assets across the Muslim world.

Opinion

The spectacular increase and recent plunge in the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have raised concerns that the bursting of the Bitcoin bubble will cause financial markets to crash. They probably won’t, but the Bitcoin bubble should finally destroy our faith in the efficiency of markets.

The situation now is similar to the dot-com boom (and subsequent crash) in the late 1990s, when people started to promote new business ideas and innovations because of the proliferation of the internet. Back then, the key word advocated was “disintermediation”. Today, the underlying technology is blockchain. The key word becomes “decentralisation”.

Joe Davis, Vanguard’s global chief economist and the head of its investment strategy group, weighed in on the world’s largest digital currency, expressing enthusiasm about bitcoin’s underlying technology but extreme bearishness about the cryptocurrency itself.